This is the blog of London Green Left, the regional branch of Green Left, the ecosocialist current within the Green Party of England and Wales. The content here is not necessarily Green Left or Green Party views, but is the personal opinions of our members or interesting posts from elsewhere. Please feel free to comment on the posts here. If you would like to contact us directly, please email mike.shaughnessy@btinternet.com. Follow the blog on Twitter @MikeShaugh

Friday, 10 March 2017

20th Century Socialism took the Eco out of Socialism

You could, no doubt, write a long book along the lines, and
some have, that my headline suggests, but this a short blog post, so I can’t
really go into huge detail here. It is a summary. However, I hope this blog
stimulates some debate, and maybe encourages some to think about socialism
differently.

There have been threads of socialist thought, and ecosocialist thought, going back hundreds if not thousands of years, but the
concept really, self-consciously, began around the 1820s and 1830s.

Around this
time, of the industrial revolution, capitalism started to resemble the
economic system we see today. The factory workers would soon realise their
strength within the system, as well as their weakness, and a way of thinking
about the way capitalism worked began to form out of necessity.

Later in the nineteenth century, Karl Marx emerged as the
most important socialist thinker and writer, and his three volume work Capital,
became the basis for much of what socialism stood for, and what it was against. In fact, it
was mostly about what it was against, capitalism that is, in what was a
brilliant and radical critique of how the system exploits those who only have their labour to sell.

Marx is a somewhat controversial figure for
ecosocialists, with some thinking he was essentially a productivist, whilst
others arguing that he was misinterpreted, and Marx was at heart ‘green.’ The
American ecosocialist writer, James Bellamy-Foster, has developed an impressive
thesis with the work he has done on identifying Marx’s theory of capitalism
causing a ‘metabolic rift’ between humanity and nature. Taken from Marx’s
volume 3 of Capital, and building on his earlier Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts, Bellamy-Foster says this is a "mature analysis of the alienation
of nature."

Personally, I take the view that Marx’s thinking and writing
was of its time and perhaps more crucially, it is incomplete. I can certainly
see that Marx had a green side to him, and much of this is demonstrated in his
volume 3 of Capital, where ecosocialists find encouragement.

Take this quote from the same volume of Capital which most
ecosocialist will be familiar with, but maybe other socialists will not be:

“From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society,
private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as
absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a
nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not
owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and,
like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in
an improved condition.”

The Russian revolution in 1917 made socialism flesh, and in
the early days of the revolution, it had ecosocialist content, such as the
conservation of land and the integration of production at sustainable levels. And Lenin introduced national parks to the country.

Arran Gare, in Soviet
Environmentalism: The Path not Taken writing about Lenin says he
‘interpreted Marxism in such as way as to acknowledge the limitations of the
environment, and of the existence of dynamics within nature with which humanity
must accord.’

This concern with ecology did not last though, under pressure
internally and externally from enemies of the revolution, understandably in
many ways, socialism in Russia took a productivist path in competition with
capitalism. The economic advances made in a relatively short time, from near
feudal economy in 1917 to putting the first man in space by 1961, was
impressive. But this all came at a cost, to the environment and in the lack of
freedom and democracy, not forgetting the brutality of the regime too. It also
sowed the seeds of the eventual demise of these societies.

Marx’s concept of a free association of producers, which
is accepted in the anarchist political tradition also, which he explored in,
yes, you guessed it, volume 3 of Capital, is completely absent from the 20th
century socialisms that came into being, led by Russia (USSR).

What Marx meant by this is a relationship among individuals
where there is no state, social class or authority, and no private property of the means of production. This gives individuals the access to the means of production
enabling them to freely associate, and produce their own conditions of
existence and fulfill their individual and creative needs and desires.

The 20th century socialisms all relied on the Party-state as
the active force directing the revolution. They used the centralised state to
direct accumulation by political means rather than the economic incentives that
capitalism uses for the same purpose. What has been called state
capitalism was the result. It was not socialism, in the true meaning of the
philosophy, which to be fair these states realised, but they saw it as a staging
post along the way to socialism, when in fact it was the wrong pathway completely.

A pathway that led to ecological destruction on a scale that
was even worse than that of capitalist nations, as well as being rigid and
authoritarian.

Ecosocialism is an attempt to return socialism to the right
pathway, but this means going back to the beginning in terms of theory, there
is no short cut. The ecosocialist revolution, if it comes, will not only come
from the bottom up, rather than be directed from above, it will need to stay
grounded at the bottom, to refresh and democratise the revolution as it
proceeds. No vanguard party, no Party-state. A democratic, decentralised
socialism with ecological rationality.

This is what ecosocialism is, and what socialism should have always been.

1 comment:

If I ruled the world, ev'ry day would be the first day of springEvery heart would have a new song to singAnd we'd sing of the joy every morning would bring

If I ruled the world, ev'ry man would be as free as a bird,Ev'ry voice would be a voice to be heardTake my word we would treasure each day that occurred

My world would be a beautiful placeWhere we would weave such wonderful dreamsMy world would wear a smile on its faceLike the man in the moon has when the moon beamsIf I ruled the world every man would say the world was his friendThere'd be happiness that no man coud end